Avatar’s Na’vi language becoming a rage!

MELBOURNE - Avatar’s Na’vi language is gradually becoming a rage, with online communities springing up to teach it and a recent US invitation-only convention garnering avid fans from as far as Europe.

The language’s creator Professor Paul Frommer said he did not underestimate the power of the Internet in fuelling people’s desire to learn the language spoken by the fictional Na’vi people who inhabit the planet Pandora in the 2009 James Cameron film.

It has even been picked up by television-musical phenomenon Glee, with new student Sam Evans uttering a phrase that sparked pages of Na’vi forum comments, debating everything from what Sam actually said to whether he used the correct pronunciation.

Professor Paul Frommer will tour Australia teaching the language of the Na’vi from the blockbuster film Avatar.

There’s also the @LearnNavi Twitter feed and a free iPhone and iPad App was released last week.

Websites spruiking the “concise Na’vi dictionary” and “Na’vi in a nutshell” have succeeded in splitting Avatar fans into two schools of thought, where some say words for objects known on earth like tables shouldn’t be translated into Na’vi because the indigenous people would not have been exposed to them.

Others say Avatar’s sky-people may have spoken about earth and it would be legitimate for such words to be created.

“It’s a labour of love, it’s remarkable. I’m still the decider and nothing is officially recognised until I put my stamp on it,” the Age quoted Frommer as saying.

“There are a lot of people who are suggesting some very good developments and they really want to use it as a genuine means of communication but you need more than 1300 - 1400 words for that.”

There is even an Australian link to the language. Professor Frommer said Na’vi shares a tripartite grammatical system with the Aboriginal language Wangkumara, spoken in Queensland but which may now be extinct.

Professor Frommer could not say whether he had been asked to continue developing the language and coaching actors for Avatar’s sequel, but he has embarked on a whirlwind speaking tour, which will culminate in visits to Perth on November 5, Melbourne and Sydney.

“I just attended the first Na’vi convention and workshop by invitation only and there were people who flew in from Europe,” Frommer added. (ANI)